About the Funeral Help Program

The information on this site is a brief encapsulation of the book The Affordable Funeral: Going in Style, Not in Debt&COPY; by Dr. R. E. Markin, director of our sponsor, the Alzheimer's Research Foundation. It also cites the world's first funeral arrangement software for the consumer, by the same name, which contains the book in its entirety, interactive forms you can fill-in and print-out, take-along checklists, a resource index, and an optional digital catalog of caskets and urns. Both are available on this website and in bookstores.

Royalties from these titles support the Funeral Help Program and this web site. The Affordable Funeral has been cited in recent articles in LIFE, MONEY, INC, Kiplinger's, AARP, US News & World Report, The Retired Officers' Association Magazine, and an upcoming issue of Reader's Digest as well as on PBS. It is the only self-help book we know of that offers a 100-to-1 payback guarantee; you'll learn how to save at least $2,000 on a funeral or your money back.

The book, and the study which gave rise to it, grew out of feedback from an earlier book, The Alzheimer's Cope Book [Citadel Press, NY]. Feedback from readers, many of whom had horror stories of financial mistreatment at the hands of the funeral industry, convinced the Foundation that a fact-finding study was in order. The study involved a survey of over 3,000 funeral homes, casket manufacturers, crematories, cemetery associations, monument companies, and perhaps most importantly, over 700 former employees of these businesses.

The results were appalling; families are being gouged with markups of 400-1400% on caskets, unneeded and unwanted {in fact, USELESS!} goods and services, and woefully inflated cemetery plots. Furthermore they are being lied to on a wholesale basis regarding what is lawfully required and the protective
nature of caskets and vaults. Death is traumatic enough in emotional terms for this unwarranted financial burden to be added by greedy and unfeeling funeral directors, their salesmen, and cemetery associations. Perhaps the saddest note of all is, although the corporate-owned funeral homes and cemeteries are by far the most consistant jackals, many family-owned businesses follow suit in their pricing . . . just because they can.